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Alabama, was a notorious fundamentalist who controlled his son by a
rigid allowance and the promise that at his next vagary the allowance
would stop forever.
They dined at a small French restaurant, and the discussion
continued – at one time Sloane resorted to physical threats, a little
later they were both imploring him to give them time. But Anson was
obdurate. He saw that Edna was breaking up, and that her spirit must
not be refreshed by any renewal of their passion.
At two o'clock in a small night-club on 53d Street, Edna's
nerves suddenly collapsed, and she cried to go home. Sloane had been
drinking heavily all evening, and he was faintly maudlin, leaning on
the table and weeping a little with his face in his hands. Quickly
Anson gave them his terms. Sloane was to leave town for six months,
and he must be gone within forty-eight hours. When he returned there
was to be no resumption of the affair, but at the end of a year Edna
might, if she wished, tell Robert Hunter that she wanted a divorce and
go about it in the usual way.
He paused, gaining confidence from their faces for his final
word.
"Or there's another thing you can do," he said slowly, "if Edna
wants to leave her children, there's nothing I can do to prevent your
running off together."
"I want to go home!" cried Edna again. "Oh, haven't you done
enough to us for one day?"
Outside it was dark, save for a blurred glow from Sixth Avenue
down the street. In that light those two who had been lovers looked
for the last time into each other's tragic faces, realizing that between
them there was not enough youth and strength to avert their eternal
parting. Sloane walked suddenly off down the street and Anson
tapped a dozing taxi-driver on the arm.
It was almost four; there was a patient flow of cleaning water
along the ghostly pavement of Fifth Avenue, and the shadows of two
night women flitted over the dark facade of St. Thomas's church.
Then the desolate shrubbery of Central Park where Anson had often
played as a child, and the mounting numbers, significant as names, of
the marching streets. This was his city, he thought, where his name
had flourished through five generations. No change could alter the
permanence of its place here, for change itself was the essential
substratum by which he and those of his name identified themselves